A Satellaview research blog.

Ahh, the return of the birthday post! This is gonna be good…

Alright, I got to post on my birthday!

So, for this ROM release… I wanted it to be something special. HOWEVER… I needed to do a lot of research first.

So let me build up to what I am aware of.

According to God-Bird.net, a magazine called “Ranking Magazine” ran from June 29, 1996 up until a undetermined (but likely 1998) ending date.

ランキングマガジン
放送期間 （遅くとも）1996年6月29日～
解説 詳細不明
—
Ranking Magazine
Broadcast period (latest info) 1996/6/29 –
Explanation Details unknown
。

Although it says this, there are other sections on the site which seem to have references to other ranking magazines.

4ステージをクリアすると成績がパスワードで表示され、それをハガキで送ることで応募できる。番組「マリオの森～ランキングマガジン」内で順位が発表され、上位には賞品も出された。ランキングイベント第一弾は5月19日、第二弾は7月20日から行われた。
—
After clearing the four stages, your score will be displayed with a password, and you can apply by sending it by postcard. The rankings were announced on the program “Mario no Mori ~ Ranking Magazine”, and prizes were awarded to the top players. The first ranking event was held on May 19th, and the second on July 20th.

Hmm, come to think of it, I think I saw that on kukun kun’s videos!
Yes… um… It was about an hour and 22 minutes into this video.
This doesn’t seem to match up exactly with the info supplied by God-Bird but it is nevertheless the evidence of regularly-distributed ranking magazines for various Satellaview Events.
Notably, this mentions not just Wario, but also WaiWai De Q and Panel De Pon. Something about BS Zelda as well.

Man, this is difficult to dig through with the hours of archival video kukun kun has, but nevertheless! It looks like these were regularly distributed.

With that established, let’s move forward!

Be sure to have the sound ON when watching this!

One of these has been recovered, and… this particular one is a real doozy!
Even compared to what kukun kun caught on video, it feels SPECIAL.

A few things to go over, but the most important thing is… the synthesized voice audio! Yes, I mean, I didn’t even know that was even possible on a Super Famicom before this point! Absolutely mind-blowing! Every person who ranked in BS Super Mario Collection got the honor of having a voiced shoutout long before the days when people paid Twitch streamers for basically the same thing!

Ah, yes, I did say this was for BS Super Mario Collection, right?

Besides the winner announcements, there’s also articles with art from the game that is higher-res than what would come from dumping the actual game ROMs!

This is also one of the first magazines we got which has many user-submitted fanart pieces!
…. WHY IS CARBUNCLE FROM PUYO PUYO THERE?

Besides BS Super Mario Collection, there are also sections for Satella-Q and Zenkoku baken ōja kettei-sen 2 (To newbies: Satella-Q was the regular quiz game series. The latter thing was a Soundlink Derby Stallion 96 event which a ROM dump for one episode was obtained of way back.)

Adding to the distinctness of this program are these idle animations for the bottom box, with Satebo and Parabo!

Do note that since this was recovered from a 8M with deleted data, the ROM may not be pure. There are no obvious bugs.


ランマガ３月号
らんきんぐ まがじん ３月号
Ranking Magazine – 3 Tsuki-gou
Ranking Magazine – March Issue
ROM download

The reason I tried to get all this research down on this before releasing is because I had some concerns about the theoretical privacy risk of a computerized voice shouting the aliases of names.
That said, my policy so far – and I intend to stick by it – has been “If it was broadcast publicly, it’s fair game.”
There’s no signs that this was a personalized copy (And I doubt the owner would have deleted the ROM like it was trash if there was a strong connection there!)
Therefore, as soon as I cross-checked and verified that similar types of magazines were on kukun kun’s videoes, I decided to post it here.
I hope you all enjoy the findings!
I’d LOVE to see the voice generation reverse-engineered and used in homebrew games!

I was planning something else for Halloween but a life shakeup happened, so here’s a rushed article.

a bit back, a ROM was dumped of BS Tantei Club – Kouhen. This is not exactly the dump that’s been going around before, which was labeled “Saihousou”. This is from the premiere.

While other build differences aren’t known, casual gameplay can access the BS Ihatovo Monogatari advertisement and event postcard screen.



BS Tantei Club – Kouhen (Premiere)
ROM Download

I will go into the dump I intended for later, I guess.

BONS: assorted redumps

Mario Paint BS Ban
Special Tee Shot
Wario no Mori – Futatabi
Yoshi no Panepon – BS Ban

Let me leave off with the text of a tweet I made a bit back, since ChronoMoogle told me it should have gone on the blog:

A lot of Satellaview preservation is thanks to 8M pack dumping. However, it is believed that some media simply can not be obtained this way.

One of them is “R no Shosai”, a series of horror anthology stories. Broadcast in 1997, this would be right up the alley of those who liked the ghost story aspects of the first Famicom Detective Club games. These are simple kinetic stories presented in photos, text and voice acting, with the main hook of the program being the choose-your-own-ending story branchs to the spooky tales.

In a feat that is rare on even the more ambitious Satellaview programs, every branching path is voice acted. How this is done, I do not know, although the heavily compressed voices during these branches suggest they were stored in the game, rather than played over the Soundlink radio.

The subject matter of the stories can get pretty dark as well, which feels un-Nintendo-like, in spite of their being credited as the developer.

Part of the reason it is suspected this can’t be recovered – besides the fact no data of it has been found outside VHS recordings of gameplay – is because there are technical signs in said VHS recordings that the program downloaded directly to PSRAM rather than the 8M memory pack. As such, outside a theoretical huge leak, only Nintendo themselves can save this one.

What a cruel twist of irony, for the game about ghosts to disappear like a ghost in and of itself.

Videos of R no Shosai can be found on kukun kun and halki’s Youtube channels.

Preserving ROMs about war amidst the war on ROM preservation. (And hacking them up, too!)

There’s been a lot of incidents going on lately that threaten the ROM preservation scene, including an attack on the Internet Archive (It’s currently down as of this writing and it’s affecting how the article is being written!) and the typical Nintendo site takedowns.

Somehow, though, I’m still pushing on.

This is not the expected October release, BTW, this is something I’m doing now because I hit some good, juicy hidden data from exploring the dump!

So what do we got?

Well, actually, we gotta do a recap before this one, because we’re pulling from a series of dumps here.
So, let’s go way back, to the days of GoodSNES. There was a ROM on their set simply called “BS Super Famicom Wars”.

Upon looking this up, on various sites, including the archives of Satellaivew History Museum, it turned out there were actually four distinct broadcasts of this.

(This has been edited to omit parts of the listing not relevant for today’s release)

03/01(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ソラマメジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Soramejima”
03/08(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ハゴロモジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Hagarojima”
3/15(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ノアカザントウ』| Super Famicom Wars BS Ban “Noakazantou”
03/22(日) スーパーファミコンウォーズ４週目 スーパーファミコンウォーズ　ＢＳ版 『ツキノワジマ』 | Super Famicom Wars BS Ban 4-shuume “Tsukinowajima”

Turns out the dump on GoodSNES was “Tsukinowajima”. Oddly, on the listing here on the site, it’s the only one given an episode number. ( 4-shuume )

A while back, a different Super Famicom Wars broadcast, with episode 2, “Hagarojima” was recovered.
… We did have that on this blog, didn’t we? I can’t recall when we got an article up for it, so let me just link this here just in case;
Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Hagarojima

Recently, a third volume was recovered – and by that, I mean it’s both the third recovered, and the third in the series.

This is “Noakazantou”.

As you can see, all of these are pretty similar, so after obtaining these and seeing the GoodSNES one, I figured if I could compare them I’d be able to find some way to toggle through the episodes to access the “missing” map, which according to the Satellaview History Museum would be the first one, “Soramejima.”

The summary of what ended up happening would basically be “I got quite a bit more than I bargained for”.

Going through the process of what I did would be boring so I’ll cut to the chase; the primary difference in each episode is hex values 363F6 and 363F8 respectively.

The latter value is still not entirely understood but it seems tied to the broadcast order, as each of the recovered ROMs is marked sequentially with 02, 03 and 04 respectively. My speculation is that this changes the password generation at the end of winning a map. Further updates on this may be necessary.

The former value is the interesting one… tinker with it, and you can change the map!
So, if Soramejima was the first map, would that make it 01?


Why yes, yes it would. (Yes, my line of thinking is that naive, and it just happened to work this time. Go fig.)

But that’s peculiar… Hagaro-jima is 06, Noakazantou 0B and Tsukinowa-jima 0C. These hex values don’t exactly go up in a sequence that looks predictable or expected at first glance.

So… what’s 02? I mean, 00 is a crash, so certainly there’d be nothing at-

Oh wait WHAT

There’s MORE maps! Maps that were not officially broadcast are in fact buried, unused, in the ROM data! They are fully playable, almost as if they may had intended to be broadcast!

You can tinker with the value for a total of 16 maps (The 4 that were broadcast, and 12 unused ones).

At the time it feels like 16 is the most I can get out of this. Attempts to break any higher will lead to bugged results.
But there’s one more really good bit: If I set 363F6 to 12, I get something resembling a proper, in-game map select, where I can scroll up or down and choose one of the 16 maps to play. (You can also try scrolling past that amount to buggy results. Not recommended.)

Perhaps with more tinkering someone can enable 2-player mode or something? Or disable BGM, or plant the retail version’s fan translation to this. Would be great for the Satellaview+ audience.

Why 12 of the 16 complete and fully playable maps were never officially broadcast is probably something we’ll never truly know the reason for. It’s especially unfortunate to think about, since St.GIGA often lamented being starved for games!

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Noakazantou
ROM Download

Incidentally, you may be wondering “With all this data, can you replicate the missing broadcast’s ROM?”
Well, I can certainly try. Here’s my attempt:

Super Famicom Wars BS Ban – Soramejima (Theoretical Replica)
ROM Download

I admit, I kinda consider a reconstructed replica to be a bit of a controversial thing to distribute. I can easily make something like that for any retail game I can spot on a schedule, but while I’ve tinkered with the idea in private (mostly to test to see how accurately I can get it done), I’ve never distributed results like that on here because I didn’t want to flood the databases with modified ROMs.

For that reason I’m making sure this is clearly labeled in the filename, and to request that no one remove that label. There’s always the chance an actual 8M dump will come along and it may end up looking different from what I got (VERY SMALL CHANCE considering how the data is so similar between episodes, but I digress).

Anyway, one more ROM to distribute.

And I bet you guys will like this one above all the “official” ROMs and “Official” replicas.

Modified Super Famicom Wars BS Ban ROM – all Maps unlocked
ROM Download

This one has the scrolling map, so you can play any map!

Since there’s now a bunch of Super Famicom Wars ROMs I’ve put them all in a set so they are easier to sort.
Download it here!

BONUS: A buncha redumps of mixed quality.

Cu-On-Pa BS Ban 7/20 (corrupted)
Zelda Kamigami no Triforce 3/18 (corrupted)
Super Nazo Puyo Tsuu (Incomplete)
Super Nazo Puyo (Corrupted)
Kid Klown no Crazy Chase (deleted)
DerbyStal 96 – Taiou 97-nendo Ban (11-24) (Corrupted)
Kodomo Chousadan Mighty Pockets – Chousa 1 – Junk-ya Black no Ie.zip
The Firemen 2/27
F-Zero 2/20
Mario Paint – BS Ban (6-4) (Deleted Corrupted)

Looking past the dump to find the data. (Part 1)

Hey, apologies for the lack of updates here. I have become a heavy contributor to the Satellaview+ project.
I hope you guys are willing to check that out in your free time.

There are some ROMs I want to save for releasing on notable dates, so I will not have major releases today. But these may be interesting to people who enjoy trying to datamine, or to make something out of incomplete dumps.

First off, let’s start with 3 redumps of Undake30 SameGame Mario version. Now, for dumps of this game in particular, that’s probably excessive. However, if you deeper into some of them… interesting things can be found

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (11-16) (Leftover data from Wizardry 7 Demo)

It turns out a demo of Wizardry VII was broadcast, and the incomplete data here confirms it.

Here’s some info danyl dug up about it.

Its allow you to see the opening demo and listen 36 different sounds.
1995/09/23～1995/09/27 (2 times per day)
1995/10/24～1995/10/31 (1 time per day)

This seems pretty basic and barebones, which probably explains why the user would replace it with something more like a proper game.
I wonder if it is possible to take the data we got from this to construct the demo, based on the description?

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (11-11) (Leftover data from Leading Jockey 2)

This one confirms the game “Leading Jockey 2” was broadcast on the service. This is a horse-race sim akin to the Derby Stallion series. The data appears to match the retail version identically.

Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (5-29) (BS Fuurai no Shiren episode 4 data)

This third one has data from episode 4 of “BS Fuurai no Shiren”, which demonstrates how easy it is for a Soundlink game to have been overwritten… thankfully, this is one we recovered prior to this dump.

There is one other dump we have with some mind-blowing leftover data, but I’m saving it for Halloween, because it feels appropriate for that time….

Some more redumps:

Super Bomberman 2
Yoshi no Panepon
Mystic Ark (deleted header)
Arkanoid – Doh it Again (incomplete)
Satespo DX Dai-5-gou
BS Tantei Club – Chuuhen (Corrupted)
Cu-On-Pa BS (corrupted)
User Same Game
F-Zero (Corrupted)
Ikari no Yousai (Corrupted)

An explosive new ROM release. Oh, wait, that was in the last set? Well, that blows. But here’s another!

Alright, I wanted to do this write up for a while… this one is a bit of a doozy. It’s gonna require a bit of build-up and explanation. This will also have more picture references and video links than the usual posting.

It’s actually kinda difficult to figure out where to begin with this, but I suppose the best way to go about this is to first show a regular bootup.
(You will notice I linked, rather than embedded, this video. I want to keep the amount of embeds I got restricted, so the primary embed I got ready will come later.)


So, what can we make of this? At first glance, it looks like a mere demo of Super Bombliss. (For the newcomers: Bombliss has had versions released in the USA under the name “Tetris Blast”, but Super Bombliss in particular is Japan-only. Effectively, consider this the version of Tetris for the Satellaview from here on out.)

The first thing apparent in comparison to the retail game is the “Radio On/Off” toggle replacing the 2-player mode.


1-player mode has limited versions of the “Contest”, “Puzzle” and “Vs. Com” modes. Notably, nothing looks completely hard-removed, but rather intentionally rendered unselectable. Now, obviously, many demos would lock out contents from the full game like this, but… oh, let’s hold there for a bit.

Before we continue, what info can we gather on Bombliss on Satellaview?
Let’s start with the archive of the Satellaview History Museum again. Over there is listed a Soundlink series for Bombliss:

1995/10/04
～
1995/10/06 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第１回

1995/10/11
～
1995/10/13 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第２回

1995/10/18
～
1995/10/20 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95
第３回

1995/10/25
～
1995/10/27 All Japan Super Bombliss Cup’95

Kukun kun also uploaded a video of a broadcast of Bombliss Cup from November the following month. While it can’t be accessed on YouTube presently, it was uploaded to webarchive, albeit with some of the ContentID’d music absent.

Alright, now, we gotta pay attention to both of these now… See those dates?


The download date of this Bombliss ROM is 10/13. That lines up with the Soundlink broadcast dates! At this point, I decided to try comparing the data of the “demo” to the retail ROM, and it became apparent that the 8M pack dump was double the filesize… filling up the 8M like a Soundlink game would.

While I was doing this inspection, though, LuigiBlood found a much faster way of getting the info I wanted to find – cheat codes.

A text file included with the ROM download contains some of the cheats found. A combination of the cheats can actually access the Soundlink mode!


Soundlink mode for what episode, you ask?


Apparently, more than one of them! Including the one shown in kukun kun’s “November Bombliss” video.

Here’s a video of the Soundlink mode in action.

Trying to get to that mode can be difficult, however. The cheat codes to do so are the codes for editing the game clock. Apparently, unlike what has been seen from previous Soundlink game dumps, Bombliss, probably to help toggle the “demo” and “Soundlink” modes, has some of the strictest and most detailed clock coding that’s been dissected so far. There are checks for not only the hour and the minute, but the day of the month, the month, and the year, and internal tables to dictate what mode the game is supposed to be on at those times! And from what I’ve seen in my attempts to fiddle with this on SNES9X, in order to use the clock cheats you need to shut off SatData Time Channel and/or anything in an emulator that would cause your clock to sync to your Windows OS. There’s no way I’d reccommend actually trying this, especially for a mode without it’s radio broadcast audio intact.

Ultimately, to step around these issues and give people checking the ROM easier access to the goods, LuigiBlood found one super code:

Unlock all stages (Puzzle Mode):
80BC850B use as an Action Replay code
or edit 0x3C85 to 0B in the dump (+ correct the checksum)

(Do note, as a general guide for using cheats on Satellaview ROMs, to wait until after the game is booted to “apply Cheats”.)
Yes, you can in fact just unlock everything from the restricted “demo” mode. But if you go into it thinking it’s 1:1 with retail, you’ll be caught off-guard.

Retail
BS cheats

It turns out, to make the Soundlink mode, the puzzles from Levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 were altered, changed completely, or moved around. (There’s also visual differences that are a bit more puzzling to figure out the reasons for.)

This means the easiest way to play the otherwise-Soundlink-exclusive puzzles from all the episodes is to simply use the cheat to access this game mode!

Which is what the video I’m finally going to have as the embed will show!

There is possibly still more to access out of this ROM. For exmaple, I played the Soundlink mode and have not managed to get the event postcard screen to appear, even though I see the tiles for that when I browse the ROM in a tile editor.

Also, obviously, proper audio recordings of all the Soundlink episodes would be appreciated. Going by what we can pull from kukun kun’s video, there’s definitely some interesting musical choices.

A dump of the November Bombliss may be potentially useful, as LuigiBlood says November time tables are not in this ROM. It doesn’t seem like it would be much different beside that, though.

This could be seen as an interesting follow up to the ages-old revelation that you can use cheat codes to access Tetris in the Dr. Mario (BS) ROM.

If you want to implement this in SatData, be aware of the notes about the clock system and cheat codes. Otherwise, videos show this was broadcast from the Stadium and did not have a unique Event Plaza.


Super Bombliss (All Japan Super Bombliss Cup 95) 10/13
ROM download

BONUS:

Another batch of redumps.

Sutte Hakkun – BS Version 2 6/17
Yoshi no Panepon BS Ban 3/21
Wario no Mori Futatabi 7/12
Dr. Mario 3/9
Super Ninja-kun 6/29
Table Game Daisyugo! 6/14
Golf Daisuki! O.B. Club 4/3
Special Tee Shot 8/16
Lord Monarch 8/2
Darius Force 3/26

My first blogpost attempt with some demo/trial versions

Hi, danyl here. You very probably don’t know who I am so let me introduce myself :

I am the last person who joined the team because they recognized my talent and uh… more seriously my role is just for research/datamining the Satellaview stuff and for my first blogpost, here’s a few trials/demo versions than I am responsible to release. Let’s begin ;))

Before to talk about this dump let me tell you a little story if you will, 11 months ago before than I joined the team in July 2023, I found a sale of a mysterious Memory Pack appointed “ミスティックアーク 体験版” for around $200.

When I told it to LuigiBlood (because I knew him since February 2023) he said that it wasn’t worth it because originally the sale was for $70 and the seller increased the price.

However, (this is just my opinion) that increase is (partially) justifiable because I know a lot of things about this dump but before I will answer to the questions of some of you might ask: “If nobody of the team bought it, How did you get it ?”

The answer is simple : an anonymous contributor bought it at the last minute (this what LuigiBlood said 3 months later after when I said I was disappointed we didn’t get the dump)

Anyways this is an Demo version of the Square’s famous RPG, Mystic Ark !

This precisely a demo which contains the intro + the title screen of the game.

Also for the little fun fact: The download date on the header (6/26) corresponds to the Premiere of this game which was the June 26, 1995, Here’s a picture of it below:

Also it got 2 magazines from the radio program “ゲーム虎の大穴” during this premiere date :

虎の大穴6/26　１　18:30 ～ 19:00

虎の大穴6/26　２　22:50 ～ 23:00

The official description is : 超大作ＲＰＧ『ミスティックアーク』の デモバージョンです。

Here’s the broadcast schedule list:

1995/06/26～1995/07/01（2 times per day）
1995/07/20、1995/07/22（1 time per day）

This was a very short broadcast period.

MYSTIC ARK DEMO  |  ミスティックアーク  デモ バージョン
ROM Download

 

This is a Trial Version of Super Bomberman Panic Bomber W !

It’s comparable to the SFC retail with some differences like the Multiplayer Mode which is not available and you cannot change the difficulty and Boss fight modes and the biggest difference is that you can only play Round 2 on the story mode where you fight in succession Perth, Brawl and Metal Bomber (the secret opponents and the tutorial are also available in this version).
Edit: Additional notes by Cabbusses: Those familiar with the retail Panic Bomber W will recall that the game uses the SA-1 expansion chip. This demo ROM does not use that chip, which may be helpful to the few people who want to load it on a floppy disc based ROM copier or an ancient ZSNES version.

Like Mystic Ark Demo, the download date on the header (5/1) corresponds to its Premiere Date which is May 1st 1995.

With Elfaria 2 Demo video, it was one of the secret games during Hudson Special Week (Between May 1st an 9th 1995) for promoting the release of Super Bomberman 3.
And I have the official description of “ハドソン特集ｖｏｌ.１” : 「スーパーボンバーマン3」大特集「高橋名人の歴史」もあるよ。

 

Here’s the broadcast schedule list :

1995/05/01～1995/05/08（Maybe 9th or 10th ?）（1～4 times per day）
1995/07/17～1995/07/24（2 times per day）
1995/08/07～1995/07/13（1～2 times per day）
1995/09/11～1995/09/15（1 time per day）
1995/10/16、18、20、21、22（1 time per day）
Reruns at the Winter Vacation Secret Game Encore Tournament :
1995/12/23、28、1996/01/02（1 time per day）

Super Bomberman Panic Bomber W (Trial Version) | ＳＵＰＥＲボンバーマン ぱにっくボンバーＷ（トライアル版）
ROM Download

 

This one is a little bit strange because we already got a similar ROM which was just appointed “ドカポン外伝” which was a retail game of the Game Best Selection which had begun in August 1996.

But here, this is a little bit different because this is the Game Tora no Ooana secret version.

According to LuigiBlood, Its seems to be identical to the previous dump of Dokapon Gaiden – Honoo no Audition in terms of content, but a lot of content is all 00s instead (precisely there are 30% of differences). Also it seems to have 12 limited starts (this can be explained because the early games with limited starts has 15 limited starts by default).

Here’s the broadcast schedule list:

1995/11/16～1995/11/23（2～3 times per day）
1995/12/27、1996/01/02（1 time per day）

Dokapon Gaiden – Honoo no Audition BS Ban | ドカポン外伝BS版
ROM Download

And…. That’s all for the moment.

“Check” it Out: For July 4th, The Real American Wai to Release a ROM… “English, mutha*****, we speak it!”

EDIT: Correction on something near the bottom of the page. “Pro Mahjong Kiwame” was listed as a redump. It turns out, the 8M pack version was not dumped before. It matches retail. The original text has not been changed since re-formatting the article to accomodate this info would be a bit a pain.

For America’s Independence Day, we are celebrating by releasing new ROM dumps alongside their already-complete English translations!
This ROM release comes with a writeup by NewsFedora. (Preface by Cabbusses)

Today we bring you something that is both new but still familiar: two more dumps of WaiWai Check and another installment of Tamori no Picross.

If you’ve not played WaiWai Check before, these are simple minigames that were broadcast pretty regularly early in the Satellaview’s life. Essentially they’re “spot the difference” games, with each week’s broadcast featuring two different stages to choose from.

We’ve had a few of these dumped in the past and while you don’t NEED to know Japanese to play these, rom hacker Krokodyl has released English translation patches of the three previously dumped WaWai games for added convenience:
WaiWai Kids (https://krokodyl.github.io/post/2023/07/waiwai-kids/),
WaiWai Check 11/15 (https://krokodyl.github.io/post/2023/07/waiwai-check-11-15/) and
WaiWai Check 03/21 (https://krokodyl.github.io/post/2023/07/waiwai-check-3-21/)

Today’s release features two more installments of WaiWai Check and perhaps in a first, we are also simultaneously releasing English translation patches, courtesy Krokodyl!

(Video embed by Cabbusses)

The first dump, WaiWai Check 8/26, also features a 9/6 broadcast of Tamori no Picross.

Wait. Actually, if I may just take a brief detour from the WaiWai Check talk, this dump of Tamori no Picross is also quite notable: while it’s a rebroadcast, it appears to be of a previously unknown and undumped episode that dates to 5/10. If that’s accurate, then that means it was first broadcast only a few weeks after Satellaview’s launch of April 23, 1995! We know there’s at least one more still-undumped episode of Picross, which was part of that April 23 launch-day lineup. But still, finding another episode that’s nearly as old — even if it’s a rebroadcast — gives me hope we can one day find that very first Picross installment.

Ok, now back to WaiWai Check. I believe this is also the oldest WaiWai Check dump we’ve found so far, and features a different title screen compared to later WaiWai Checks.

The first stage features Satellaview mascots Satebo and Parabo. You get a special message if you clear 10 rounds.


The second stage is for an RPG-ish looking level called Blunder Town, which we’ve seen previously in the WaiWai Check 11/15 episode. Krokodyl notes over on his translation github that there are some differences between this episode of WaiWai Check compared to others, as well as secret button combinations needed to access different rounds of Blunder Town.
[As of present, the nature of why these secret codes are needed to progress through this version’s Blunder Town is a mystery, and may need Soundlink audio archival from an earlier date than anything that has been uploaded prior for the context. In the meantime, the codes are on Krokodyle’s site. ~ Cabbusses]

The next dump and translation we have for you today is WaiWai Check 11/22, and it features the title screen seen in the previously dumped 11/15 and 03/21 weeks.
[This dump is credited to danyl. ~ Cabbusses]

The first stage is… Blunder Town. Again.

But on the plus side, the second is a new stage, this time called “Taisho Roman”.

One more noteworthy thing about WaiWai Check 11/22 is that a version of this broadcast has already been dumped and been in circulation for years… but nobody ever noticed it!

This game was present in No-Intro’s “Undake 30 Same Game Daisakusen – Mario Version (Japan)” but had been deleted. It was fully recoverable however, and now with this new dump we can verify that it is identical, with just the name and date being different. As a bonus and for completionist’s sake, we’re including that original No-Intro rom along with its recovered 11/22 WaiWai Check for you all.

Thanks so much to anon for dumping Tamori no Picross 9/6 and WaiWai Check 8/26, Danyl for dumping WaWai Check 11/22, and Krokodyl for translating both WaiWai Checks. Be sure to check out Kroko’s github for the patches as well as more information about playing these games.


タモリのピクロス 9/6 + ワイワイチェック 8/26
Tamori no Picross (9/6) + WaiWai Check (8/26)
Download (contains original 8M dump and split ROMs)

ワイワイチェック 11/22

WaiWai Check 11/22 Saihousou (11/24) from Undake30 dump

WaiWai Check 11/22 (danyl’s redump)

(Kroko’s translation patch links:
https://krokodyl.github.io/post/2024/03/waiwai-check-8-26/ and
https://krokodyl.github.io/post/2024/03/waiwai-check-11-22/)

We’ve got much, much more on the horizon, so stick around, it’s about to get busy up in here.

BONUS: I’m putting up some assorted redumps.
Most of these are probably not important to anyone outside people wanting dumps to be double-verified, but they may still be useful for research of dates of broadcast.

BS Fire Emblem Dai-3-wa 10/18
BS Marvelous Time Athletic Dai-4-shuu
Cock-A-Doodle-Doo 8/10
BS-X Shooting 7/26
Zooto Mahjong
Sutte Hakkun Event Version 4/10
Nintama Rantarou 2 3/22
Pro Mahjong Kiwame
MARIA – Part 1 1/25
Zelda no Densetsu : Kamigami no Triforce

New ROM dump to sow the seeds of chaos on your pathetic, imperfect emulator.

(Minor updates to fix some small errors. ~ Cabbusses

General note: As ChronoMoogle did the primary write-up, he is credited for this in spite of me doing the publishing. I have some notes on emulation compatibility after his words. ~ Cabbusses)

Hello everyone,

it’s ChronoMoogle for a change. I did provide a small write-up for a recent ROM dump release of the Bounty Sword Satellaview demo, but it’s been a while since I did a more in-depth one.

Today, we have another similar demo that has kindly been obtained and dumped by Matthew Callis for the very first time – Chaos Seed, developed by Neverland of Lufia and Rune Factory fame. And since I helped with the beta-testing of the English translation by Dynamic Designs and pretty much know the full game inside-out from that, I hope I can give you a decent small introduction of the game and what exactly is included in this Satellaview demo.


(My video recording. ~ Cabbusses)

A few days ahead of the game’s retail release in Japan, this demo was streamed for download on the 11. March 1996 via the Satellaview to preview the game to interested players. There were later restreams, but this dump actually appears to be the initial one.

Most demos on the Satellaview were unaltered 8Mbit titles with limited startups, but Chaos Seed was one of the more ambitious previews that managed to shrink down a 32Mbit game to a demo that was only 8Mbit of the originals size to make it compatible with the 8M Memory Packs. Only a very few Satellaview demos did this, including Tactics Ogre: Let’s Cling Together, Bounty Sword, Tenchi Souzou (Terranigma) and a handful more.

Chaos Seed is an incredibly complex game, which combines the genres Action RPG (with actually quite Terranigma-esque execution) and Simulation (somewhat similar to Dungeon Keeper). You are a hermit tasked to maintian and create caves that hold the nature in balance through Feng-Shui, which is sadly misinterpreted by normal humans as an evil witchcraft.

The meat of the game is to manage these dungeons which get invaded by human “heroes” and monsters. While doing so, the player needs to expand, manage and protect the dungeons and their interior. In some parts of the game, there’s also some adventure-esque portions that feature town and dungeon exploration. And there are some quite impressive boss fights. The game is massive and easily offers 100+ hours with different endings and many secrets.

The demo being shrinked down to 1/4 of the orignal game’s ROM size and only being ment to promote the game obviously only offers a small part of that… Some Japanese sources in the internet prior to this dump pointed towards this being an exclusive scenario for the game – And while this is unfortunately not true, it’s a quite impressive demo nonetheless.
(Technically a modified, abridged scenario specific for this version could be considered an exclusive scenario, but needless to say that wasn’t entirely what I was hoping for when I read those initial descriptions. Aw, well! ~ Cabbusses)

The Chaos Seed Satellaview demo features the biggest part of the game’s introduction scenario, which is still roughly 2-3 hours (!) in length. This scenario includes the story intro, an in-depth tutorial dungeon and a first simplified simulation mission. The retail version features a non-simplified one and some more cutscenes in the scenario after that (enhancing this chapter to about 4+ hours in the full game), but this last part has been cut from the Satellaview demo, likely due to data size reasons. In the content that’s there though, pretty much all in-game features are intact without restraints. A fun oddity: You get to pick the heroine’s name at the start of the demo, despite her making no appearance in it. Guess they sort of forgot to cut that bit. After the demo has been cleared, the player gets send back to the title screen. Saving progress is still possible in this demo, but the save data will get wiped once the console is turned off.

All in all one of the more interesting and technically impressive Satellaview demos out there, it’s great to see it preserved!

(Additional notes on the dump added by Cabbusses below)

danyl has provided a list of confirmed scheduled broadcasts below:

カオスシードBS版
1996/03/09～1996/03/15（2 times per day）
1996/03/20（1 time per day）
1996/04/07～1996/04/13（1 time per day）
CHAOS SEED (named like that on BS-X menu from May 1996 broadcasts)
1996/05/05～1996/05/11（2 times per day）
1996/05/12～1996/05/18（1 time per day）
1996/05/26～1996/06/01（2 times per day）

The date on the ROM header is 3/11, which coincides best with the first week of broadcast according to this list.

The YouTube recording above was recorded on the bsnes-plus emulator that is provided on LuigiBlood’s BS-X Project site, rather than my usual SNES9X (1.61 as of this article’s writing) recordings. The reason for that is because this ROM has issues running in SNES9X: The save menu seems to corrupt, causing the game to try to load unworkable save data. The game crashes if the bad saves are loaded or if there is an attempt to start a new scenario in these saves. (Strangely, the scenario menu corruption causes scenarios that do not exist in this demo to be listed.)

This is NOT an issue with the dump – the checksum is correct, and the game plays correctly on my BSNES recording.
Furthermore, these issues happen on SNES9X even if the BS-X BIOs emulation and SatData are used.
LuigiBlood has informed me that this ROM works on Mesen. Meanwhile, I tested on SNESGT and it does not work.
Other emulators still need testing, but it not working correctly on SNES9X means compatibility is going to be low (I’m not even going to bother with ZSNES). Please be patient for your emulator of choice to update if you seek to play this ROM dump on it.

Lastly, I will leave a general reminder: These ROM releases are the work of a group of enthusiasts whom will greatly appreciate any further assistance.
If you have a tip on finding any sort of Satellaview data or would like to make a contribution for the cause, please contact LuigiBlood.


カオスシード BS版 | Chaos Seed BS Ban
ROM download